Family jailed for tax dodge

A Doncaster family who ran a ‘highly organised’ tobacco smuggling ring have been jailed for a total of nearly 10 years.

Ronald Edwards, his son, and two sons-in-law oversaw a packaging operation importing 2,100kg of tobacco which was liable for import tax of more than £370,000.

Edwards, (pictured) aged 64, of Lords Close, was jailed for two years. His 37-year-old son Lee, of Grange Road, Paul Higgins, 46, of Chantry Close, Cantley, Russell Scherdel, 51, of Warnington Drive, Bessacarr and Alexander Ainger, 33, of Essex, were each jailed for two-and-a-half years.

They found Edwards senior, described as the leader of the conspiracy, had just taken delivery of more than 1,800 kg of tobacco.

The unit had only been rented that morning, with the lorry carrying the tobacco led to the storage facility by Scherdel, a son-in-law of Edwards, after he had met the driver on nearby Clay Lane.

Mr Hassall said Edwards was ‘ably assisted’ in arranging the importation by his son and two sons-in-law, Scherdel and Higgins.

The delivery note for the pallets described the contents in cardboard boxes as ‘discount/ex display clothing’.

The court heard the recommended retail price for the tobacco inside would have been at least £462,000, with duty evaded on that shipment alone worth £295,398.

Edwards senior’s home, off Bawtry Road, was searched and officers discovered a tobacco packing plant in his garage which included wooden racks to hold a tobacco pouch while being filled.

From a coat pocket inside the house, they seized a number of unused counterfeit tobacco pouches for brands including Pall Mall, Golden Virginia, Drum and Amber Leaf.

Officers also searched the then Bawtry Road home of Edwards junior and found an industrial packaging machine and several rolls of Cellophane in his garage. Remnants of tobacco pouches and tax stamps were also found showing tobacco had previously been packaged there.

Full pouches of tobacco were also seized, while in the bottom of a wardrobe in Edwards junior’s bedroom, templates for counterfeit tobacco pouches were found including Golden Virginia, Drum and Tennessee Gold.

Customs officers had observed meetings in September and October between various members of the Doncaster group and Ainger, who had put them in touch with smugglers in his area.

Cars linked to Edwards senior also made trips to France via the Eurotunnel.

Paul O’Shea, for Edwards senior, who suffered a stroke in 2012, said a brother who had died owed money to Travellers who had threatened him and his family to take over the debt.

He told the court: “The mechanism selected to repay the debt was this operation.”

All five admitted conspiracy to evade duty on hand-rolling tobacco. A fifth Doncaster man, 65-year-old Anthony Scothorne, of Thorntondale Road, Scawsby, has been convicted of the same offence after a trial and will be sentenced at a later date.

Sentencing them, Judge Tom Bayliss QC, said the smuggling was professionally planned and ‘was not a one-off operation’.

He said: “In my judgment, this was a tobacco-packaging operation on an industrial scale.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Thorne and District Gazette provides news, events and sport features from the Thorne area. For the best up to date information relating to Thorne and the surrounding areas visit us at Thorne and District Gazette regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Thorne and District Gazette requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.